Overwatch 2 removing SMS Protect for the majority of original Overwatch players
Blizzard has announced that it is removing the SMS Protect requirement from Overwatch 2 for the “majority of existing Overwatch players.”
In an update posted on the Blizzard forums, the developer revealed that any Overwatch 1 player who has connected their Battle.net account, which includes everyone who played after June 9th, 2021, will no longer have to provide a phone number to access the game. This is scheduled to go live tomorrow, October 7th.
“We remain committed to combating disruptive behavior in Overwatch 2—accounts that were not connected to Battle.net as well as new accounts will still have to meet SMS Protect requirements, which helps to ensure we’re protecting our community against cheating,” Blizzard added. “If a player is caught engaging in disruptive behavior, their account may be banned whether they have a new account or not.”
Blizzard also offered updates on missing items and locked heroes. The developer blamed the missing items on the account merge not being completed correctly due to a bug on consoles not showing the prompt and the account merge taking a long time.
“In all cases, no player data has been wiped or lost. We have a client-side fix for this that cannot be deployed until next week, so we are exploring server-side fixes and will provide updates as more information becomes available,” Blizzard said.
Overwatch 2 is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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